Nursing Home Without Walls for Aging in Place in Rural New Brunswick

About the project

Most older adults prefer to stay in their homes for as long as possible. However, they often face challenges in accessing appropriate and reliable services at home. To address this issue, the Nursing Home Without Walls (NHWW) pilot project was developed and implemented to facilitate healthy aging at home by providing additional resources to long-term facilities to offer essential support and services to older adults. The NHWW pilot project aimed to:

  • Ensure that older adults have access to appropriate services and information related to aging in place
  • Provide social health initiatives to counter social isolation and loneliness
  • Increase knowledge on health-related issues important to aging in place
  • Empower local communities to respond to the needs of an aging population

Conclusions and lessons learned

  • Participants aging in place have varying needs and programming offered must be person-centered and flexible.
  • Participants had increased knowledge on health-related issues for healthy aging and aging in place.
  • Social health initiatives provided through NHWW were successful in improving feelings of belonging and decreasing social isolation and feelings of loneliness.
  • Overall, the participants felt supported to age in place with the services they received from NHWW.

Recommendations

  • Ensure sustainable and long-term funding for NHWW program sites so that they can provide consistent and reliable service offerings to current clients and expand to more clients.
  • Provide appropriate support to NHWW staff to ensure they are well-prepared to handle the emotional nature of providing navigational services to older adults and caregivers.
  • Strategically expand services to older adults to ensure these expand in proportion to the available and sustainable resources to prevent potential program staff burnout.

To learn more read the complete project findings (PDF 146 KB)

Knowledge transfer